Interesting and Unusual Words: “Synonymize”

It’s the time of year when it’s best to start coursework. For one piece of writing I really wanted to say ‘so-and-so has made a synonym of the term, A which is B‘ and the way I wanted to express this as ‘so-and-so synonymizes A with the term B‘. After thinking that this couldn’t be a word, I thought I’d look it up. To the OED! The result? It does exist. Phew! Success, I am not making up words again (Never again will I do that after the last time I did it in an essay!). This being said, the OED does say that it is only used rarely nowadays, but the meaning is easy to decipher – it is the action of making a synonym of something. It also has a good ring to it – quite sibilant; synonymize. If you need to save words and your saying ‘so-and-so has a synonym for A which is the term B’, try to change it into the verb and see if it works. Save using extra words – use synonymize! (this will only apply in certain contexts, please don’t just throw ‘synonymize’ into essays instead of other words…)